This invention relates to an image capturing apparatus capable of recording a captured image together with information about an image capturing place and the like.
In recent years, car navigation systems having a built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) have been commercially available.
Also, there have been proposed a variety of public radio communications systems, such as mobile telephone system, personal handyphone system (PHS). These public radio communications systems have different zone areas which respective radio transmission base stations of the systems can cover. For example, the mobile telephone system has a large radio area, such as the size of a city. This system is called a large area radio communication system or LARCS. The personal handyphone system has a small radio area, such as the size of a block of a city. This system is called a small area radio communications system or SARCS.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,296,884 discloses a camera provided with a position detector adopting GPS. This camera has an advantage of specifying a place of photographing by the built-in GPS receiver. However, the camera having the built-in GPS receiver has a larger size and consumes a large amount of power, which necessitates mounting of a heavy battery. This reduces the degree of portability.
Further, there has been proposed a search system adopting the PHS, specifically a wandering aged man search system. According to this search system, an aged man having a wandering habit is equipped with a terminal of the PHS and his position is confirmed by receiving radio signals from a base station of the PHS.
However, these technologies utilizing the GPS and the public radio communications systems, the camera having the built-in GPS receiver and the wandering aged man search system adopting the PHS have not vet fulfilled the strong demand of an image capturing apparatus having small size, small power consumption, excellent portability, and recording of image capture place information.